Happy Halloween

This year the base-wide trick or treating was this past Saturday evening.  Unfortunately it was pouring down rain, but since it wasn't postponed (as I thought it should be) the girls got all dressed up and headed out to fill their pillowcases with as much candy as they could.

Due to our location in the world the bases over here are on much tighter security then they are in the states.  But on trick or treat night they open the gates and pretty much let anyone on.  This translates to A LOT of trick or treaters.  I bought enough candy for about 450 kids and I probably had about 30 pieces left over. 

Since we live overseas we had to order our costumes very early.  Taylor decided she wanted to be a skeleton and Lucy a butterfly.  I found a cool "punk skeleton" for Taylor and I found a fairy costume that had wings on it for Lucy.

On Halloween I always put makeup on the girls. It is the only time they are allowed to wear makeup out of the house so it is a big deal.  I had no problem with Lucy's butterfly makeup.  All pink.

Taylor's punk skeleton makeup was a little more difficult for me as I never went through any type of goth/punk stage in my life and I don't wear a lot of dark makeup.  I had a hard time making her look punk and not "beat up".  It turned out ok, but by the end of the night she pretty much looked like she had 2 shiners.

Lucy and dad waiting for Taylor's makeup to be done.

All ready to go out for some candy.

See what I mean about the shiner thing?  She is to cute to be punk anyways.

We live in a secure neighborhood so we allowed the girls to trick or treat by themselves and Russ and I stayed back to hand out candy.

I think the light behind us makes us look like we are in Heaven.

The girls had a good time despite the rain and we had fun giving out candy.  Our rule is eat as much candy as you want on Halloween night...just don't come complaining to mom when your belly hurts.  Candy for dinner...
but they did very good eating responsibly so they weren't sick.

Sorting and prioritizing their candy.

The next day I took all the extra candy into Russ' office so that I wasn't tempted to eat it.  I know my limits.

Field Trip Time

I'm starting a new series today called "I Think Something Was Lost In Translation" Part 1:

Usually I can tell what the English translation is supposed to be, but I'm not so sure here.  I'm fairly certain it is OK to use this mirror if you have clothes on though.  I definitely think something was lost in translation.
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Taylor's class went on a field trip to a zoo a couple weeks ago and I had the privilege of going along with them.   Because teachers have to cover so much material each school year, field trips are usually very academic in nature (reading between the lines this means they are boring), but this field trip was pretty much just for fun...the way field trips should be.  They didn't have to fill out any worksheets or answer any questions, we didn't have to find anything special or write a report when we got home, it was just a day to get out of the classroom and look at fun animals.

Getting to the zoo was a very unique experience.  We took the subway...now just so you can get the full picture of what this was like-imagine about 50 students, 35 parents and 2 teachers all trying to stay together and not lose anyone on the subway--in a foreign country--in the second largest city in the world--in which English is not the predominant spoken language.  That experience in itself totally made the field trip worth it.  Thankfully the kids are older and for the most part able to stay with the group.

We all had to walk from the school to the subway stop.  It was about a half mile walk. 

Taylor's teacher trying to figure out who needs subway tickets and who already has one. 

We all made it on the subway.

Taylor has some really nice girls in her class this year.

Since you have all probably been to a zoo and know what animals look like I won't bore you with a ton of animal pictures, just my favorites, but I will say this is one of the best zoos I have ever been to.  The animals were the most active of any zoo we have visited.  Their living spaces were big and very well maintained and the zoo was beautifully landscaped.

We could get so close to the animals...don't worry it was still a very safe distance.

This seal put on a great singing show for us.  He just sang and sang and if we stopped paying attention or started to walk away he sang louder.

We took a picture with the singing seal.

The flowers were beautiful and there were so many of them.

These are kimchi pots stacked on top of each other.  If you don't know what kimchi is you will have to either google it or wait till I write about it on here.

There were a few other Korean school groups at the zoo the same day we were.

Aren't their matching uniforms adorable?

One of these is alive and one of them isn't...try to guess which is which.

 Lots of fun places to take a photo.

A class picture.

A class picture.

One last picture before we headed home.  It was one of the best field trips I have ever been on.

Roller Coasters in SeoulLand

Korea has a lot of amusement parks.  A few are pretty big and then there are a bunch of small ones.  I found a coupon for us to get into one of the smaller ones for less then $10.00 each for the day so one day when the girls had off school and Russ was off work we went and checked it out.

The first thing we noticed was how beautiful it was.  There were fall flowers everywhere.

They don't really celebrate Halloween over here like we do in America, but they still decorate for it.

We went straight to the roller coasters and were all very happy when we saw Lucy was tall enough to ride them.  This was her first time on a "big-people" roller coaster.  She was really excited.

Ok, maybe I was a little excited too.

While it wasn't a huge amusement park there were plenty of rides to keep us busy.

The girls were tall enough to ride some of the ride by themselves.  They thought that was pretty cool.

Waiting in line for the pirate ship.

They had the boat divided into two different lines.  One was for the middle and the other was for the ends.  Since I am deathly afraid of heights and because the line was much shorter we went into the middle seat lines.  It was a pretty good idea, we only had to wait a few minutes to get on.

Here is the story behind this picture...the kid in the blue and white shirt was not tall enough to ride the ride, but his parents or who ever was with him wanted to ride, so they left the poor kid sitting beside the ride BY HIMSELF and went on the ride.  Now on occasion, I have been accused of being a little un-compassionate, but even I would not let my child sit on the side and watch while everyone else rode the ride.  He didn't seem to mind though, he was perfectly content to just sit there and watch.

This was one of those rides that seemed like a good idea at the time but we all quickly realized was not a good idea at all.  Remember I'm very scared of heights...so what was I thinking when I agreed to a ride that would suspend me upside down for minutes over and over again a few stories in the air?  It was a horrible experience, I can't even say what it looked like to be upside down because I had my eyes closed the entire time.  Both girls rode this ride as well and both hated it.  Only Russ got off the ride with a smile. 

Plotting the path to our next ride.

This was a very funny "Korean" experience for us...we decided to go through the haunted house.  What we didn't think about ahead of time was that anything that was said would be in Korean.  We figured it wouldn't be to big of a deal because ghosts and headless men look the same no matter what language they speak.  Well, we were totally wrong about this one.  This was a walk through story haunted house.  The entire thing was narrated and from experience I can tell you that if you can't understand the story it really isn't all that scary.  This picture was of our "tour guide".  He really did a good job trying to scare us, but when you have no idea what the story is it just loses some of the effect.  Based on the Koreans reactions, I think the story must have been scary because they seemed scared.

Outside of the haunted house.  

This was a cool optical illusion house with a mirror maze. 

Waiting in line.  Taylor photo bombed us.

I'm pretty sure I have seen one of these somewhere else.  I just can't put my finger on where.

A family picture before we headed home.

Ice Gallery

A couple of months ago I heard about a place called the "Ice Gallery".  I was told it is basically a huge walk-in freezer that has a bunch of ice sculptures in it.  I looked it up and it said that the freezer was kept around 35 degrees and if you don't bring a coat they have some there for you to borrow.  I wasn't really into wearing a coat a ton of other people had worn, but I thought it sounded like a fun hot summer day adventure.  So we dug out our heavy winter clothes to put on over our summer shorts and t-shirts and headed out to find the Ice Gallery.

My directions were pretty good but the signage for the place was not...

I don't know if you can tell but that arrow points directly to a huge brick wall.

We were so excited when we found it, but our excitement was quickly squelched when we realized it was closed. :(  We had no idea why it was closed but sometimes Korean businesses just close down when they feel like it.  So we had to put the Ice Gallery adventure off for another day. 


Fast forward ahead a few months to last weekend and we decided to give the Ice Gallery another try.  It has cooled off quite a bit here, so we already had jeans on, but we still packed up our winter coats and headed out.  We were all very happy when it was open this time.

We passed this cool looking new traditional house on our way.

We got all bundled up and were all immediately hot, it is in the upper 70's low 80's here right now--cool but not winter coat and hat weather.  Thankfully, they didn't make us wait long before they took us to the freezer.   They opened the doors and told us to take our time.  It was so cool-figuratively and literally.

There were huge ice sculptures everywhere.  Right now it is the 100th birthday of Oreos so they had an entire display of Oreos.

It's an Oreo birthday cake.

All the Oreo packages are frozen in ice.

They also had a display for the Olympics.

There was a small ice slide that the girls had a ton of fun on.

At the top of the steps.

You would go pretty fast and she flew out at the end.

They had a different rooms in a house made out of ice.
The bedroom...

The kitchen...

This was the refrigerator in the kitchen.

The living room...

Playing the ice piano

Talking on the phone and using the ice computer.

Warming themselves by the "fire"...Lucy's tush was a bit cold after going down the slide so much.

And of course no house would be complete without a bathroom...

Yes, that is an ice toilet.

Caught Russ at an awkward moment in this picture. :)

I hope people realize the toilet isn't actually real.

After the ice house they had an ice school scene.

Sitting at the ice desk

Listening to the ice teacher.

The ice whiteboard.

Next were a bunch of Korean landmarks.

An ice Buddha

One of the gates that surround Seoul.

This was a massive ice dragon.  It was so big we couldn't get it all in the picture.

It's a dark picture, but it is a huge 2012 behind us.

 Next an ice igloo and aquarium.

They were all inside the igloo.

The lights kept changing colors so it was a little bit difficult to get a good picture at times. 

The fish were a bit sluggish at this aquarium.

By the time we got through everything we were all pretty cold and ready to be done.  We left the freezer, took off all our winter clothes and went back upstairs to the main level.
For a few extra dollars you could carve your own cup out of a block of ice.  The girls thought this sounded like a lot of fun so we paid for them to do it.

Giving us a demonstration how to carve our cup.

He did it so quick and made it look so easy.

Eager to get started...

Quickly realizing it isn't as easy as the demonstration made it look...

And guess who did most of Taylor's cup...

And who did most of Lucy's.

It didn't matter who did most of the work, they still had a great time drinking soda out of their ice cups.  By the time we got them carved the cups had really started to melt.  The girls asked to take them home, but quickly realized that was not going to happen.

 For the most part we had the place to ourselves, but right before we left a huge Japanese tourist group came in and pretty much took over the small place.

At one time in this small room 3 different languages were being spoken-Korean, English and Japanese.  What a culturally diverse life we live right now.  So awesome.

Before we left we snapped a few family pictures.

Sporting the Eagles jersey at the Ice Gallery.  On the subway during the trip home a Korean boy asked me about my jersey.  He knew a lot about Philadelphia and America in general (He knew the state capital to every state...I quizzed him on most of them.  It was pretty amazing.)  He was excited to use his English on us and I was of course excited to talk about the greatest state in America with him.

Definitely one of our more unique adventures since getting to Korea.  This city has a ton of cool things to do.  If you come visit we will take you with us on our adventures.  :)